The Christmas Socks
by andromeda527
Summary: In the years and months after Voldemort's final defeat, Neville Longbottom seemed to drift through life. But he always wondered who was leaving those socks on the White Tomb every Christmas... one shot.


Author's Note: this is my first fic in quite a while. I just went through my account recently and took down a couple of in-progress stories that I knew were never going to be completed, but my other one shots are still up. Anyway, this was actually somewhat inspired by the wizard rock tune "Drop the Needle (It's Christmas)." If you've never listened to Harry and the Potters, go Google them right now... that is, after you've read this story and left me a review.

* * *

After a one-year hiatus, after Harry Potter, the Chosen One, died defeating You-Know-Who, Hogwarts reopened and Neville Longbottom returned to school for his seventh year.

Some things hadn't changed. He still spent most of his time in the greenhouses, working toward his N.E.W.T. in Herbology with Professor Sprout. Hagrid could still be seen coming and going in the Forbidden Forest, always puttering around with some dangerous creature or another. The Three Broomsticks was still a haven on Hogsmeade weekends.

But still, Neville couldn't shake the feeling that this was a different Hogwarts than the one he knew.

The most obvious changed could be seen just by casting an eye at the staff table at dinner every evening. Professor McGonagall had taken Dumbledore's place as Head; Slughorn had consented to remain for a few more years as Potions master, a pug-faced witch named Nesbit had taken McGonagall's place at Transfiguration, and Nymphadora Lupin (nèe Tonks), of all people, had taken the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. She had left the Auror Office in protest of Minister Scrimgeour's policies after Harry's death, and had also taken over as Head of Gryffindor. Neville had only met Nymphadora Tonks a few times before, but he remembered her but he remembered as exuberant and almost silly, with her hair in another wild style and color every time he saw her. Though her hair was still waste-length and electric blue, it tended to stay that way most of the time now, and though she didn't seem unhappy (far from it, she positively radiated joy whenever she was in the same room as her husband), she was definitely more subdued than she used to be.

Hermione, Ron, and Ginny were polite to Neville, but with Harry gone he drifted away from them. He spent most of his time with Luna, whose flights of fancy at least took his mind off of everything that had happened.

The strangest thing of all was looking at the first years. Because of the school's one-year closure, there was double the usual amount of them, so many that the four-poster beds in the first year dormitories had been replaced with bunk beds. When Neville watched them talking and laughing in the common room, all he could think was that they would never know the Hogwarts he had known, Hogwarts with Harry... Hogwarts with Dumbledore.

* * *

A month before the Christmas holidays came the unexpected news that Neville's gran had died. He missed a few days of classes to go home for her funeral, but when Professor Lupin came around to take the names of those who would remain at Hogwarts for the holidays, he put his name down. He couldn't face Christmas with his relatives, not this year. Professor Lupin raised her eyebrows at him but said nothing.

Christmas day dawned bright and cold. Neville opened the pile of presents from his great aunts and uncles, but he skipped breakfast in favor of a long walk around the snow-covered grounds, his cloak fastened high around his neck. Snow was late in coming this year, and the grounds were mottled in mute brown and green, waiting for the iron-gray clouds hanging in the sky overhead to finally spill their fluffy contents. He wandered along the edge of the lake with its sheen of ice (what, he wondered idly, did the giant squid do in the winter?) until he found himself standing by the White Tomb, tracing the words carved into its marble surface with the fingers of one gloved hand. "To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure," read the epitaph. He tried not to think about how many of his friends were on that adventure now.

It was strange, considering the dull colors of the landscape, that the pair of violently purple knee socks draped over the far end of the tomb didn't catch his eye sooner. When they did, he frowned and picked them up. Who on earth would have left socks here? Perhaps they were totally harmless, but he had better show Professor McGonagall, just in case.

He went back up to the school and found Professor McGonagall just leaving the breakfast table. She followed him down to the tomb and stood very still for a moment, staring at the socks, face unreadable. If Neville hadn't known better he would have sworn her eyes were over-bright. Then she snatched up the socks and marched back to the castle, leaving Neville standing in the snow.

A few months later he had occasion to visit her office and saw that she had tacked the socks to the wall beneath the sleeping portrait of Dumbledore that hung behind her desk. But in the flurry of taking his N.E.W.T.s and graduating and finding a place to live and a job, the odd memento left on the tomb by the lake was pushed out of his mind.

* * *

Neville left Hogwarts with one Outstanding N.E.W.T. in Herbology and a handful of other passes he had managed to scrape. Wanting to go somewhere far away, to "find himself" as it were, he applied for a position on a team going to Mongolia to research a new edition of _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_. His grandmother objected strenuously, but he was accepted and left shortly after Ron and Hermione's wedding in August.

He enjoyed Mongolia, enjoyed working with plants and with other wizards who liked plants. But he didn't find himself; all he found were three new subspecies of puffapod. This discovery was enough to secure him a job working for an experimental greenhouse in Majorca when his year with the research team was up. He spent three years in the Mediterranean sun, so different from the grays and greens of England.

Then came the news that Pomona Sprout was retiring. Hogwarts was looking for a new Herbology Professor.

* * *

Neville took the Knight Bus to Hogsmeade. Ernie Prang told him a story about the time a boy with untidy black hair and a scar on his forehead had taken the Bus to London under the name of Neville Longbottom, only to be met by the Minister and turn into Harry Potter. Neville didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

As he stepped out of the bus on the edge of the village and began to walk down the high road, he meditated on his feelings about returning to this place. Hogwarts was associated with both the best and worst memories of his childhood -- being tormented by Snape and dancing with Ginny Weasley at the Yule Ball; the shining months with Dumbledore's Army in his fifth year and attending Dumbledore's funeral in his sixth. He was filled with nervous anticipation. Coming back to Hogwarts was wonderful, but it was also like picking at an old wound that had never really healed.

Hagrid, enormous and unchanging as a mountain, met him at the gates. They exchanged pleasantries as Hagrid let him in. It was August, and except for the staff who had remained over the holidays the school was deserted. Walking up the path to the castle's front doors, everything he saw seemed to bring back recollections of his school days. Hagrid's hut, the edge of the Forbidden Forest, the lake with the White Tomb visible on its far side. Hagrid saw him as far as the front doors and then retreated.

When he went up to McGonagall's office, he was startled to see the purple socks still hanging on the wall—joined by four more pairs, all in bright colors and patterns, arranged around Dumbledore's portrait like a tapestry devised by a crazed house-elf. "Professor," said Neville, staring at the wall, "has someone been leaving socks _every year_?"

"Yes, Longbottom, someone has been leaving socks every year. Now, I was under the impression you were to be interviewed for the position of Herbology teacher?"

"Oh—yes, sorry." He tore his eyes from the socks and sat down.

He got the job. Professor Sprout came to congratulate him as he was moving into his rooms at Hogwarts. He made her a cup of tea and they chatted for a while about old times. As she was getting up to leave, he thought of something he wanted to ask her. "Professor Sprout, did—did Professor McGonagall ever find out who's been leaving those socks on Dumbledore's tomb?"

"On Dumbledore's—oh! Is _that_ where they've been coming from? I did think that was the strangest thing, a new pair of socks just appearing on the wall of her office every year after Christmas. I couldn't think why she was doing it. Neville, I'm sorry, but I haven't the faintest idea."

"Oh. All right, I just thought I'd ask." But now he couldn't get the thought of those socks out of his mind. It was such an odd thing to leave at someone's grave. Who on earth could be doing it?

* * *

That Christmas, his first Christmas as a professor, Neville hatched a plan.

Hagrid was spending the holidays in France with Madame Maxime, and Neville secured his permission to spend Christmas Eve night in his hut, the window of which had a distant view of the lakeshore and the tomb. When the time came, he made himself a mug of tea, dragged Hagrid's enormous armchair over to the window, wrapped himself in a blanket, and prepared for a stakeout.

If he had been familiar with the Muggle legend of Santa Claus, he might have been struck by how much he resembled a Muggle child waiting up all night in hopes of catching a glimpse of the jolly old elf. And like a Muggle child on that Christmas Eve mission, he found his mind wandering... it was certainly warm and comfortable in here...

Neville's snores rattled the rafters of the cozy building.

* * *

He jerked awake the next morning with a snort, and immediately cursed himself when he realized what had happened. The socks! He hadn't seen who had brought the socks! He dashed out of the hut and across the grounds to the white tomb, and there they were, a pair of wool socks in an acid shade of green with a pattern of silver stars worked on them. Disappointed, he picked them up and took them back to the school, where he handed them over to McGonagall.

She invited him to come up to her office with her while she hung them up. She seemed in a strangely communicative mood this Christmas morning. "Longbottom," she said as she stood on a chair to hang them above the portrait, "I certainly wish you'd seen the person who left these. I... I think it must have been someone who knew Dumbledore. He..."

"What, Professor?"

"Well, he always did have an odd fondness for socks." She suddenly sounded as though she had a head cold.

Neville looked up at the portrait of Dumbledore. He had never seen Dumbledore in the portrait awake, but now he thought he saw a smile pulling at the old man's lips. When he blinked, however, it was gone. Perhaps he'd only imagined it.

Maybe, he reflected... maybe it didn't matter who was leaving the socks on Dumbledore's tomb. Maybe all that mattered was that every Christmas, someone remembered. Even though this generation of Hogwarts students would never know the sight of Dumbledore standing at the front of the Great Hall, conducting the school song, his eyes twinkling... somewhere, there was someone who remembered.

Neville smiled as McGonagall climbed down from the chair and starting hunting around her desk for her tin of biscuits. Hogwarts was still Hogwarts, and anything was possible here. Accepting a Ginger Newt from the headmistress, he started back to his rooms. He would open the presents his relatives had sent him and then work on marking some of the third years' essays. And when Hagrid got back from France, he should think of something nice to do for him to thank him for the use of his cabin.

Neville found himself whistling a Christmas carol. Yes, Hogwarts was still Hogwarts. It had been here long before he had come here, and it would still be educating young witches and wizards long after he had gone.

* * *

A/N: Don't even bother asking who left the socks. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Anyway, hope you liked it. 


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